Fade-durations derived from land-mobile-satellite measurements in Australia

Transmissions from the Japanese ETS-V geostationary satellite were measured at L-band (1.5 GHz) in a vehicle driving on roads of south-eastern Australia. The measurements were part of a program designed to characterize propagation effects due to roadside trees and terrain for mobile-satellite-service (MSS). It is shown that the cumulative distributions of fade and nonfade durations follow a lognormal and power law, respectively. At 1% probability, fades last 2-8 m, and nonfades 10-100 m, depending on the degree of shadowing. Phase fluctuations are generally small, allowing the channel characteristics to be estimated from levels only